The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Road explores the outcome of an almost barren world with next to no people living and food to be eaten. A little boy travels with his caring, smart, and resourceful father. They wheel a cart with bare necessities (food, fire, blankets, a tarp, and water) down a long road until they reach the coast stopping at night and various other times when they are exhausted. There are a few themes explored in this book including father-son relationships, trust, not giving up, and acts of sympathy. The boy develops a relationship with his father in which he adheres to all orders given to him and is scared to share dreams with him. The circumstances change their relationship--the boy in forced to trust his father because he has nothing else to believe in. The duo never gives up on their journey. Even with little sustenance they continue traveling and they find more food whether it is in the basement of an abandoned house, or a ship stuck in the ocean near the coast. When the father and son pass by a weak man that they both realize will die, the boy wants his father to give him food even though they need that food too. This act of kindness pays off because at the end of the book, when the father dies, the boy is taken in by another family of a mother, father, and two kids who will feed and look after him.